As the war in Ukraine nears its third anniversary, U.S. President Donald Trump called Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday, in what Trump characterized as the start of negotiations to bring the conflict to an end.
UVA Today sat down prior to Wednesday's announcement with William Antholis, director of the University of Virginia’s Miller Center of Public Affairs and chair of an every-other-week, off-the-record “Ukraine War Room” video conference, to see if there’s a chance of ending the war.
Q. What is the current situation?
A. For people who feared that a Donald Trump presidency would mean the abandonment of Ukraine, their worst fears have not materialized. This is consistent with what many presidents have faced, where they inherit policies from their predecessors that end up being much more complicated and much more difficult to unwind than either they or the public expected. The Trump administration has come to understand the complexity and is aware that a collapse of Ukraine would be bad politics for Donald Trump, in addition to being a bad policy outcome for the United States.
Q. Why would Russian leader Vladimir Putin negotiate for peace?
A. The impact of sanctions is taking a toll. Inflation is now near 10%; food is becoming prohibitively expensive, particularly things like fruit and vegetables and bread. Even energy costs are starting to rise. Ukraine’s invasion into the Kursk region of Russia has had a psychological impact on the Russian people and probably Putin himself.
Q. Is European support for Ukraine flagging?
A. Europe’s economic support of Ukraine has been a strong, constant effort to rebuild its energy infrastructure. The Russians have been attacking the power transmission and generation sectors of the Ukrainian economy. The Europeans currently provide more than half of the energy infrastructure assistance to Ukraine. The United States provides about $800 million, but the total supply in the last year has been about $2 billion, and the bulk of that has come from the Europeans.
Where Europe is limited is on the military hardware side. They have supplied airplanes and tanks and the like, but the U.S. remains the principal supplier of things like shells for various combat systems.
Q. Can the United States supply military material to Ukraine and the Israelis as well?
William Antholis says bringing North Korean troops into the Ukraine War has made Russia look weak. (University Communications photo)
A. Short of a major reinvestment in our industrial base, expanding facilities that build the materials and crank it out, we’re going to continue to be at maximum capacity. The Trump people do not want to collapse Ukraine on their watch, and they also don’t want to look like the negotiations capitulated to Putin. While it’s not imminent, I think the chances of the Trump administration continuing to provide military support for Ukraine are better than many would have thought some time ago.
Q. Is Ukraine in a better negotiating position by holding some Russian territory?
A. Outsiders initially perceived taking Russian territory as an attempt by Ukraine to have a bargaining tool, including potentially getting back some of the land that has been taken from them. That has been far more successful than many outsiders expected, drawing Russian attention away from battlefronts inside Ukraine. The bigger impact is the psychological and the strategic one of saying to the Russians, “We can invade your territory, too. And you are not very well prepared to stop that.”
Q. How are the North Korean troops affecting the war effort?
A. Russia has been fighting a true war of attrition. They’ve been just trying to throw everybody they can muster to the battlefront. The sign of their weakening internal economic and political position is the fact that they went to the North Koreans and got them to commit troops. But the North Koreans said, “We’ve had enough.”
